Guide to applying to the GCSB for your file

Anyone who is interested in finding our whether they are one of the 88 people who have been spied on illegally by the GCSB since 2003 can write to them and request their information under the Privacy Act. Below is a basic letter template that can be copied:

Date

Government Communications Security Bureau
PO Box 12209
Thorndon
Wellington 6144

To whom it may concern:

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION UNDER THE PRIVACY ACT

Under the terms of the Privacy Act, I am requesting all information held by the GCSB about me.


Yours sincerely,

Name
Date of birth
Address (PO Box is OK)

How the GCSB's illegal spying got exposed

Currently, there are new laws before parliament that will allow the GCSB to do what it was previously not allowed to do - to spy on NZers. Below is some background information.  

Operation Debut
When on January 20, 2012 the police operation “Debut” descended on Kim Dotcom’s modest cottage in Coatesville, his communications had been intercepted for some time. The subsequent court hearings revealed that it wasn’t the police who had done the spying, but another, unnamed agency.

In September, it became clear that the GCSB, NZ’s foreign spy agency, had been involved in the spying on Dotcom. His lawyers argued that this had been illegal, because the GCSB Act of 2003 clearly states that the GCSB is not allowed to spy on NZ citizens and residents. Dotcom was a NZ resident at the time, but the GCSB claims that his residence status at the time wasn’t clear.
As a result, John Key – as the Minister in charge – asked the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence (IGSI), Paul Neazor, to compile a report into the matter. Neazor came to the conclusion that the police and the GCSB had been confused about Dotcom’s residence status and had therefore unwillingly acted illegally. Neazor did not think the GCSB Act was ambiguous, in fact he recommended that the GCSB should be alerted to the fact that “the wording of the provisions of the GCSB Act are controlling”. As a result, Key apologised “to Mr Dotcom, and … to New Zealanders.”

The Kitteridge Report
Also in September, the government commissioned Rebecca Kitteridge to review the GCSB’s handling of the matter. Her report, published in March 2013, is damning. It reveals that since 2003, the GCSB had spied illegally on 88 other NZ residents or citizens, in most cases at the request of the SIS.

The report found that the GCSB has no policies and procedures in place to check if what it does complies with the law. Its part-time legal advisor for 15 years, Hugh Wolfensohn, hardly ever asked for advice from the Crown Law Office. No one ever analysed if the GCSB was affected by other legislation or if the use of new surveillance technology was within the law. There was essentially no record keeping. One of the most worrying aspects is that the GCSB seems to have signed international treaties without the government knowing.

Submissions on the GCSB Bill

The government’s reaction to the damning report about the GCSB by Rebecca Kitteridge was to introduce the “GCSB and Related Legislation Amendment Bill”. It passed its first reading under urgency on May 8, 2013.

Its main change to the GCSB Act consist of removing the word “foreign” from the Act in order to allow precisely what the previous version expressly ruled out: that the GCSB can be used to spy on NZ citizens and residents. One of the roles of the GCSB is to assist the SIS and the Police, the argument being that not doing so would mean that expensive surveillance equipment would have to be duplicated across the agencies and that would be inefficient. Therefore the GCSB should be able to spy on NZers when assisting other agencies. Human rights are being violated in the name of efficiency – an extremely dangerous thing to do.

Other changes in the Bill are that the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence will get a deputy (so far he has been all by himself) and can now conduct random checks with the GCSB. This falls considerably short of the recommendation of the Kitterridge report, which asked for a structure similar to that in Australia, which has 12 staff.

Below is the official blurb about the GCSB Bill. Submissions can be made to the Intelligence and Security Committee at GCSB.Bill@parliament.govt.nz by Thursday, 13 June 2013.

Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill

The bill is an omnibus bill that proposes amendments to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act 1996, and the Intelligence and Security Committee Act 1996. The purposes of the bill are to make clear the statutory framework governing the activities of the GCSB and to enhance the external mechanisms for the oversight of the New Zealand's intelligence agencies. The Intelligence and Security Committee is inviting submissions on the bill. The closing date for submissions is Thursday, 13 June 2013. A copy of the bill and the regulatory impact statement can be accessed from the downloads panel on this page. Submissions can be emailed to GCSB.Bill@parliament.govt.nz. If you wish to appear before the committee, state this clearly and provide a name, daytime phone number, and email address. Submissions will generally be made public. The committee is required to report to the House on this bill by 26 July 2013.

The Bill can be downloaded here.

GCSB & the lives of others: Public meeting

Public meeting on the surveillance by the GCSB

You are warmly invited to a public meeting on Monday, May 27 at 6pm at the Mezzanine Meeting room of the Wellington Central Library to discuss the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), the illegal surveillance it conducted, the law change being made to legalise its unlawful activities and the role of the GCSB in the US global surveillance network.

Speakers:
Nicky Hager - author of the book Secret Power which exposed the secrecy of the GCSB
Keith Locke - who has been spied on by the state since he was 10 years old
Michael Bott - member of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties

New Bill in Britain

The British government has introduced a draft bill to introduce total digital surveillance. Details about every email, phone call or text message in the U.K. (sic) would be logged — and they say that those  worried about the program are all either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

If (or when) this Bill becomes law, providers would collect IP addresses, the details of customers' electronic hardware, and subscriber information including names, addresses, and payment information.

Physical communications would also be monitored: Address details written on envelopes would be copied and parcel tracking information would be logged as well.

The state would be able to keep all the data up to a year, or longer if it was the subject of legal proceedings.

The monitoring will be done without the need for the police or agencies to apply for a warrant. No one will know the extent of the monitoring, its effects, nor the conclusions that the authorities may draw from the data.

Search and Surveillance Bill Passed

The Search and Surveillance Bill was passed on 22nd March. Now it just needs rubber stamping before it becomes law.

When this Bill becomes law, the range of opportunities for legal surveillance available to police and various State agencies increases dramatically. That also means, the 'illegal' activities that those same forces do, shift laterally and also widen.

When this is law, there will be a lot more warrant-less searches and surveillance and warrant-less use of spies, or HIDs - Human Intervention Devices. Road blocks like those seen on 15th October in Ruatoki could become the norm, and increasing use of detention on mere belief that a 'crime' may be committed.

The right to silence and the right not to self-incriminate are also attacked under this law.

March 22nd was not a good day in history. Let's hope that somehow this Bill is never rubber-stamped.

S&S Bill May Be Decided Tuesday 20th March

The Search and Surveillance Bill most probably comes out of Committee on Tuesday 20th March. It will then be voted on and could be law by April 18th.

It will be a sad day.

Search and Surveillance Bill to be Law by April

Judith Collins, Minister of Justice, has announced that she intends that the Search and Surveillance Bill is law by mid-April this year.

Mid-April is when the 'temporary Video Surveillance law' expires. That is the law rushed through parliament to retrospectively legalise illegal police action. An action described by many lawyers as 'abhorrent' and even 'repulsive' and not needed. It is (or was) already law then, that any evidence gathered (whether legally or illegally) can be presented in court under the Evidence Act, at the discretion of the court, depending on the seriousness of the evidence.

New Zealand is one of the only lands where law can be changed retrospectively on the whims of government.

Once the Search and Surveillance Bill becomes law, we will be even more on the road to becoming one of the most heavily surveilled countries in the world.

There will also be fundamental changes to 'law and order' - the right to silence will be gone, as will the right to not incriminate oneself. And the law has a catch-22 phrase to legalise all future surveillance developments before they have developed.

This Act, hand-in-hand with other law changes going on, mean so-called 'rights' such as the right to a jury trial, the right to be present for your own court case, are being written out of law.

The Search and Surveillance Bill needs to be stopped now.

Video Bill Passed

The Video Surveillance Bill is law. It was passed on October 6th, 2011.

The Bill makes it explicitly lawful for government agencies to use covert video surveillance under a warrant for private property. In plain language, it legalises police breaking the law and planting secret surveillance cameras inside peoples' homes.

The bill has retrospective effect, ensuring that all video footage can be used as evidence and that previous convictions that relied on video evidence are not open to appeal.

Another law, the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act, was updated in April. It allows private security to install video cameras to assist their work, however they are still unable to legally record in a private residence but that allows, for now, video surveillance and records made in all other areas.

This is in contrast to Germany which bans companies from spying on employees, and they are even banned from checking out employees on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Urgent Action Alert – Stop the Video Camera Surveillance Bill!

It is only days now until Parliament votes on the law that would legalise covert video surveillance by Police, Fisheries, SIS and Customs. This bill must be stopped! It is the most serious assault on our fundamental freedom and rights in our lifetime. As it stands, no warrant is even required to conduct video surveillance.

We are asking everyone to take two minutes to email members of Parliament who have not decided which way to vote and tell them to vote ‘NO’ on the bill. It is likely to be voted on this Thursday (October 6). At present, the National party does not have the numbers to pass the bill. It only has the support of United Future. It needs 3 more votes – so we want to make sure that neither the Labour Party nor the ACT party support this dangerous bill from becoming  law. The Green, Maori and Mana parties do not support the bill at all.

Please email any member of parliament you like. We would certainly encourage in particular emails to:

ACT party
Rodney Hide – rodney.hide@parliament.govt.nz
John Boscawen – john.boscawen@parliament.govt.nz
Roger Douglas – roger.douglas@parliament.govt.nz
Hilary Calvert – hilary.calvert@parliament.govt.nz
Heather Roy – heather.roy@parliament.govt.nz

LABOUR
Phil Goff – phil.goff@parliament.govt.nz
Annette King – annette.king@parliament.govt.nz
David Parker – david.parker@parliament.govt.nz
Charles Chauvel – charles.chauvel@parliament.govt.nz
Grant Robertson – grant.robertson@parliament.govt.nz
David Cunliffe – david.cunliffe@parliament.govt.nz
Ruth Dyson – ruth.dyson@parliament.govt.nz
Clayton Cosgrove – clayton.cosgrove@parliament.govt.nz
Maryan Street – maryan.street@parliament.govt.nz
Trevor Mallard – trevor.mallard@parliament.govt.nz

The most important thing to say is:

‘VOTE NO ON THE VIDEO SURVEILLANCE BILL’.

Other things you can say are:

• It is an assault on the rule of law as it retrospectively legalises illegal police actions

• It is an assault on the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure

• It is an assault on the right to privacy

• You don’t want any expansion of the power of the state to surveil people

The police and government have been misleading the public by saying that the bill will ‘restore the common law position’ - the police have never had the power to do trespassory video surveillance. The police knowingly broke the law and should be prosecuted.

The ONLY submission received in support of this law was from Police. All other submissions – including the Law Society, Criminal Bar, civil society organisations and hundred of individuals all opposed this bill.